


in the dark with you

by tiredhealer



Series: Danteli Cinematic Universe [1]
Category: Brighthearth
Genre: Other, aureli and dante in the big pit can i get a woo woo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:54:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27741088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiredhealer/pseuds/tiredhealer
Summary: At the party in Excess, Aureli is captured and thrown into darkness.Dante follows. They don't understand why.
Relationships: Aureli/Dante, Danteli
Series: Danteli Cinematic Universe [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2029147
Kudos: 1





	in the dark with you

The fall goes on forever. Aureli braces themself to never land, for it to just be this, always, an eternity of dark and twisting air. 

Of course, it does end. They have a second to register that they're no longer in the tunnel and then they hit the water, hard. Their scream is muffled by the wet, and when their lips part they taste copper flood across their tongue.

Aureli staggers to their feet, gasping. They’re not in water at all: it’s blood. A lake of it, a veritable ocean. Their hair drips red, their gown is soaked through. They fumble through the tide for where their cane has sank down and hug it to their chest. 

Where are they? Their eyes barely have a chance to adjust to the dark, to the utter pitch, when they hear the sound of something falling from above. They stagger back from the mouth of the tunnel in the ceiling and stare up. A figure flashes purple and red above them, falling in a gleaming arch, a dive rather than a plummet, then sinks into the wet. 

Dante. His disguise dropped, no longer a rugged human but the same sharp tiefling as always. He doesn’t land face first in the lake as they did, he falls with style. 

They hate him for that.

When he rises for air, his mismatched eyes dart about, before settling on them. ‘Aureli,’ he whispers. ‘Get down.’

‘What?’

A scream erupts from behind them. Dante grabs them by the waist and pulls them down and they’re about to scream, to slap at him, to tell him to _get off,_ but he already has a hand over their mouth. 

Another scream makes them fall silent. Dante presses them back against a wall of cover that - oh, of course, it isn’t a wall, it’s a pile of corpses. Aureli shudders and Dante nods, grimacing. 

He lets them go. They’re so close they can feel the warmth radiating from his skin, and his fingers have left molten imprints on their lips. He probably has some of their lipstick on his hand. 

Why would they think that?

Aureli twists away, peering over the edge of the pile. There are people. Other guests, judging by their clothes. And two huge…lizards? Yes, lizards, but bigger than any Aureli has ever seen, skirting over the heaps of blood and bone towards the screaming guests. The ones who got thrown down here before Aureli. 

They devour them. The crunch of bone is sickeningly loud in the darkness.

Aureli looks up at Dante. ‘What do we do?’ they whisper. 

‘I have no idea,’ he says.

‘Why are you even here? They didn’t grab you.’ The last thing they saw before they were thrown was the rest of the party - Dante included - being kept back from the VIP lounge. The only one near them was Mal, who had wild shaped into a bird to claw at the man trying to hold her. 

What a shame Janus couldn’t give them tricks like that. But the point remains the same, Dante was far away, he was _safe._ So what is he doing here…?

He looks down at them. He doesn’t have to say it, they can read it in his face. 

_Oh._

‘You...you came after me? Why?’

He shrugs. That isn’t an answer at all, and they want to grab him, scream at him, demand to know what it is he wants with them. Why come to their room and pluck Janus’ name from their lips only to jump into danger for them now? What did any of it mean?

They don’t grab him. They don’t scream. There isn’t time, because one of the lizards is inching closer, its tongue flicking out in the dark. Lizards are common in Blithe. So Aureli knows what it’s doing, that it’s using its tongue to test out the smell in the air. That it’s trying to find them.

They exchange looks. A nod. And they both curl their fists. 

Giant or no, the things are lizards. It doesn’t take much for spells to pull apart flesh and sinew, to expose bone and then tear it. 

The things die, as all things die. And Aureli leans heavily against their cane when it is done, feeling the cold that’s soaked into the gown slide deeper. They’re going to have bronchitis when this is through, they just know it. 

‘Are you alright?’

They snap at him from behind gritted teeth, ‘Why do you care?’

Again, that awful, infuriating shrug. ‘We don’t have to be enemies, you know.’

‘You might have thought of that before you _compelled_ me to tell you my patron’s name.’

‘I do believe you tried to compel me right back. It’s only that it didn’t work.’

Aureli sneers and turns away from him, walking further into the room, treading carefully over the bodies. ‘You started it.’

‘And if you had finished it that would have made it all alright, hm?’

They twist to face him and find him standing just behind them, watching them with a little infuriating smile. 

‘That isn’t the point,’ they say.

‘Then what is?’

From above them, a scream. Dante’s smirk breaks at the sound.

‘It isn’t one of ours,’ Aureli says eventually. ‘I’ve heard them all scream enough to know.’

‘With any luck they’re torturing the ones who threw us in here.’

‘But they didn’t throw you in here,’ Aureli says. They step closer to him and squint upwards with suspicion. ‘You came after me. And I still don’t understand _why_.’ 

‘I could hardly go back to your cousin without you.’

But that isn’t it. Aureli can tell there’s more, tell there’s something else, and they want to know what it is because there’s so much here they just don’t understand. 

‘Everyone else hasn’t followed me,’ they whisper. ‘And they’re my...They’ve known me longer than you.’

‘Maybe our connection is just that deep and intimate already I felt compelled.’

‘Not funny.’

He smirks, ‘It is a little.’

Aureli turns away from him. They intend to try and find an exit, but when they take a step their knees buckle and one of the trapped nerves in their spine flares. They hiss pain out through gritted teeth and sink to their knees, managing to sit themself down onto one of the heaps of bones. A poor seat, but beggars can’t be choosers after all.

‘Aureli?’ he moves towards them, his gown dripping blood as he does. ‘Are you alright?’

They want to snap at him to get away as he reaches for them, but somewhere between that and words pain catches in their spine again and instead they reach for him, instead their blood-slicked palms slide together and they end up holding him instead. He keeps his hand in theirs as they squeeze and ride out the pain, his other hand rubbing at their upper arm softly.

He doesn’t tell them it’s alright, doesn’t whisper useless platitudes like most. He just stays close, keeps his hand moving in small circles, and eventually as the pain begins to subside he says, ‘I’ve got you.’

Despite it all, they believe him.

‘I’m fine,’ they manage eventually. ‘The fall aggravated my back, is all.’

‘I don’t know any healing magic -’

‘It wouldn’t help, anyway,’ Aureli says. ‘But – thank you.’

It feels strange to say that. How long has it been since anyone sat through a flare up with them? They look up at him as kneels before them, at the tattoos that dance along their cheekbones and the sweep of their black hair. For all the rage they felt when they plucked Janus’ name from them, there’s something else there too: he is like them. Like them in a way no-one else they’ve ever known has been.

And, fine. They have eyes. Dante is gorgeous; angular, lean, pierced and inked, jewellery dripping even from their horns. They can admit that _might,_ just _might_ be part of why they make their chest so tight whenever they come near.

Aureli gives in to that strange, uncertain feeling in their chest. They reach out and with trembling fingers wipe a streak of blood off of his cheek. His skin is warm beneath their fingers. They’re close enough together that they hear how he inhales sharply at the touch of their skin against his. 

‘Blood on you,’ they whisper, like that explains it, like that answers why they touched him with such tenderness.

It must be the lizards. They were likely poisonous, and their skin has secreted venom in death. They’re dizzy with poison right now, that’s all.

Nothing to worry about.

Except then Dante leans in. His breath is warm against their face, his nails sharp but impossibly gentle as he wipes his thumb over their chin, so close to their mouth his claw caresses their lip. 

‘Blood on you,’ he says as they tremble, as the feeling of his hand on them makes their body betray them completely and utterly. 

They might have done something foolish in that moment, if he’d carried on. But a shout begins to echo from the tunnel, the sound of bodies falling. Anya appears first, plummeting into the water. 

And Aureli breaks from Dante, staggering to their feet and pushing through the pain to run towards her. They feel his eyes on them every step of the way.


End file.
